


Maybe We're Different

by wonder_womans_ex



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Everyone's gay, How Do I Tag, I blame hannah for this, I promise this fic will be much less awful if you read it in john mulaney's voice, IT'S GAY, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, So much kissing, gay gay gay gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, no editing we die like men, the grammar sucks tho sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29119944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_womans_ex/pseuds/wonder_womans_ex
Summary: Kissing Dally was like ice. Cold, but the nice kind of cold. Refreshing. No, that's not quite right. It was like a breath of fresh air.I never wanted to stop.
Relationships: Johnny Cade/Dallas Winston, Sodapop Curtis/Steve Randle
Comments: 1
Kudos: 36





	Maybe We're Different

**Author's Note:**

> cw: use of the f-slur by a gay man to describe himself

I suppose it all started the day I caught Sodapop Curtis with his tongue in Steve Randle's mouth. 

Soda had one knee on either side of Steve's lap, and they were sitting on the couch with their hands in each other's hair. I ain't never seen anyone kiss like that, before or since. Certainly not my folks, anyway. I never saw them kiss, or hug, or anything like that, at all. They just ain't the type. Come to think of it, maybe that got something to do with how awful they're always treating me. 

Before they died, the Curtises—that's Pony and Soda and Darry's mom and dad—kissed loads. On the cheek, on the lips, and Mr. Curtis used to kiss Mrs. Curtis's hand sometimes. It made her blush, and it made the guys blush, too. They were embarrassed, I think, to have parents that was kissing all the time. 

I wouldn't be. There's not a thing I wouldn't do to have folks like the Curtises. 

But for all they kissed, I'd never seen them kiss like Soda and Steve were. I s'pose they must have, just not in front of us kids. That was when Steve saw me. 

Soda was leaned back from him, and they were talking too quiet for me to hear. We locked eyes over Soda's shoulder and I watched as his face got real scared. He swore, and that made Soda turn around to look at me too.

He was shaking as he climbed off Steve's lap and walked over to me. He grabbed my collar, too, pulling so tight it almost hurt. I'm not sure who was more scared then—him or me. 

"Listen, Johnny," he said, voice all slow and quiet-like. "What you just saw now never happened, you dig? In fact, Steve wasn't even here tonight."

'Here' was the Curtis house, where I had been staying after my old man kicked me out for the third time in a week. Usually, I crashed downstairs, on the couch, but that night Soda had said I could take the room with Ponyboy instead. Now I knew why. 

"Don't worry. I won't tell no one—cross my heart and hope to die." I made the motions, too" an X over my chest. After a second, I added, "I'm... I am, too. That. So you ain't the only ones."

Soda was looking at me like I'd just told him I had a heater on me. Steve was, too. I guess they just hadn't pegged me as the type—for carrying a heater _or_ necking other guys. We're greasers, after all. We're only supposed to do one of those things. 

Even _I'd_ never given any thought to it. Being a fag, that is. It was something I'd pushed to the back of my mind, and locked away until I saw Soda and Steve on that couch. But afterwards, I found myself thinking about it a lot. 

I could tell that Soda knew I thought about it, too. A couple times, when he and Steve were going out, I'd tell Ponyboy me and him could head to the movie house. Soda loved Pony, I knew. But he obviously wanted to be alone with Steve, and the two of 'em couldn't exactly do much if Soda's kis brother was around. Soda always smiled at me when I did that. 

But mostly, when I wasn't with Ponyboy, I was with Dally. And the more I hung around with Dally, the more I thought about him. Sure, I'd always thought about him, but that's when I started to _think_ about him—y'know, the way most guys think about girls. But I thought about guys, and I thought about Dally. 

Then, one night, the impossible happened. 

Dally and me were together, sitting side by side against the wall at Buck's. Now, that room is as good as his, and I knew that there wasn't no one that was gonna disturb us. Not that there was much to disturb—we were sharing the last of Dally's cigarettes, passing it back and forth between the two of us. 

We were almost down to the filter when he took a long drag and said, "Hey, Johnnycakes, you know I love you, right?"

I swallowed. "Yeah, Dally. I know."

"And you love me, right?"

"Yeah, Dally. I do."

He stubbed out the cigarette on the floor. "I'm sorry, Johnny."

"Why, what for?"

"I'm sorry I can't love you like you love me."

At that point, I'm sure my heart skipped a beat, maybe even two. How had he found out? I'd sworn to myself I would never tell a soul, and I'd made good on that promise. "Oh."

But he just kept going. "I know us greasers are supposed to be like family, Johnny. And the others are, sure. But you ain't. I don't love you like I'd love family, because I'm pretty well sure I wouldn't want to kiss family even if I had any left."

I was quiet for a couple seconds, waiting to see if he was gonna say anything more. He didn't, so I said, "Shoot, Dalls, what if I don't love you like family neither?"

The expression in his face was one I'd never seen before. His eyes were wide and soft and his mouth was open ever so slightly. There was a little crease between his brows. 

Carefully, I reached out towards it with one finger. His eyes slid closed as soon as our skin touched, and I didn't even think about it—for once, I just did what my heart said. 

I leaned over and kissed him. 

It wasn't anything like in the movies. It wasn't anything like the Curtises, either. Those kisses were full of passion and power and whatever else it is people talk about when they reckon they're in love. This was just the barest brush of our mouthes against each other. 

Maybe it's different when it's two guys kissing. But then I thought about Soda and Steve, and I thought that maybe it's just me and Dally that's different. I dunno. I ain't never kissed a girl, and I ain't planning to neither. 

Kissing Dally was like ice. Cold, but the nice kind of cold. Refreshing. No, that's not quite right. It was like a breath of fresh air. 

I never wanted to stop. 

But eventually, we had to, because kissing ain't breathing no matter how much it feels it. We broke apart—not like we had been touching much to begin with—and we just looked at each other. 

Finally, he said, "What'd you do that for?" And I said "'Cause I love you," and he said, "Right. Yeah," real slow, like he hadn't quite realized that yet. 

He kissed me, that time. 

See, the thing they don't tell you about kissing is that even though you want to keep doin' it forever, you can't. You get tired. So we ended up lying on our backs there on the floor. We were both staring up at the ceiling with its stains and its watermarks and its broken light fixture, but i could picture his face perfectly. I guess that's just how well I knew him. 

In my mind, he had one corner of his mouth turned up in a smile, eyes crinkled in a way that look almost unnatural on his cold, angular face. Sure enough, when I glanced over at him, that's what he looked like. For once in his life, Dallas Winston was _happy_ , same as me. I rolled onto my side. 

"Dally," I said. 

"Yeah?"

"What's the difference between loving someone like family and loving him like... like we love each other? Other than wanting to kiss him, I mean." 

"Gee, Johnnycakes, I dunno. I never was good at that think stuff."

That's when it hit me—"Maybe that's why. I'm a thinker, and you're a doer. I can think about something all I want, but when it comes down to it, I can't just go out and be brave like you can. I see the world for you, and you make something out of it for me. Hasn't it always been that way? Even before we were in love?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Or maybe it's that we see the best in each other—I woulda never thought I make anything from the world, 'cept maybe trouble. And you—you say _I'm_ brave? Hell, kid, if either's of us brave, it's you. I'm just a coward with a crooked grin and a switchblade."

"Dally," I said again. 

"Yeah?"

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yeah."

I sat up, and I grabbed his hand. I could see him watching me. I wasn't sure what I was doing when I kissed his palm, but he smiled some more, so I did it again. This time, he stroked my cheek real gently with his thumb. 

His smile only got wider and wider as I made my way up his arm. I kissed each of his knuckles, and then the knob of his wrist. I could feel the flutter of his pulse as I pressed my lips repeatedly to the inside of his forearm, going a little higher each time. 

I think some of the other guys—even me, I guess—forgot that Dally had a heartbeat same as everybody else. I never would again, because now I'd felt it quicken under the gentle insistence of my mouth, slowly and surely syncing to mine. 

I knew Dally had done this with girls before—shoot, maybe even with other guys, too—but somehow it still felt like we were learning it together for the first time. 

We both giggled a little when I kissed his elbow, because it seems like a pretty funny place to kiss someone. He stopped giggling, though, when I started going further and further up his bicep. I could feel the warmth of his shoulder through his t-shirt. 

He tilted his head back at the first kiss to his collarbone, so I did it again. And again. And once more for good measure. I almost kept going at that slow, languished pace, but then I though that as much as I liked the sharp gasps I got in return for every kiss to his neck, I'd much rather feel his mouth on mine. 

It was even better than the last time, or the time before that, because those times had been one of us kissing and the other one kissign back, but this time we were kissing each other equally. I dunno how to explain it—like I'd told Dally, I'm a thinker and he's a doer, but the truth is that neither of us is real good at sayin' stuff. Maybe that's why it took so long for us to get around to figuring all this out. 

We kissed for so long I almost forgot my own name. I almost forgot his, too. Just for that night, we weren't Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston. Or maybe we were. But either way, we were _more_ than that. 

We were like a sunset. 

And just like you never forget a sunset, I ain't never gonna forget that night, because that was the night me and Dally started to find ourselves. 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> come say hi to me on tumblr: [wonder-womans-ex](https://wonder-womans-ex.tumblr.com/)
> 
> asks are always open :)


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